The Culture of Breath

At DAC 2001, I would like to exhibit an interactive installation, The Culture of Breath, that presents the viewer with a visual archaeology of a single bodily gesture. The act of breathing is presented as a series of visual layers: physical, biotic, and psychological.

On the physical level, the artist reminds us that we can consciously hold our breath and halt the automatic process of breathing for a short period of time until the body revolts and reasserts control.

The act of breathing creates a dynamic interface between our exterior and interior environments. If you hold your breath, you live a contained existence for a minute perhaps. Time is protracted; the seconds tick away while the body revolts. First, your cheeks balloon with air trying to escape. Then the throat starts to swell. Your eyes water as the lips remain clamped. Fingers pinch the nostrils tightly. After a large gasp, the mouth opens involuntarily and sucks furiously.

When you enter the darkened installation space, you view a looped video of a woman straining to hold her breath. The video suspends the narrative where the fight between voluntary and involuntary breathing is at its height. Viewers that walk close to the contorted mouth discover that they can release the woman from her breathless state. Standing on the white floor mat allows the subject to breathe freely.

The interactive video projection illuminates the installation’s second layer, the biological representation of breath. To the left hangs a plexiglass container that houses 108 petri dishes. The dishes contain bacteria and fungus captured from human breath.

In this project, I adopt the role of artist and data collector. The process of specimen gathering allows me to interact with potential art viewers outside the traditional realm of the gallery. I approached people studying in the University of Michigan’s graduate library and asked them to participate in an art installation. With my prompting, subjects held their breath and exhaled forcefully into the agar covered plate. In addition to breath samples, I asked my subjects to donate personal information via a survey. Both the physical and psychological residues of my subjects become an integral component of the installation.

In the gallery, the bacterial colonies grow daily in unpredictable patterns and directions. To the right hangs a written archive displaying facts about the participants including answers to questions like: "When was the last time you felt breathless?" The looped video of the lungs in distress is thus framed by biological evidence of bacteria multiplying rapidly and by psychological data that indicates that breathlessness is a symptom of being out of control.

The word, "culture," metaphorically frames the installation. On the one hand, this word refers to the anthropological definition related to patterns of behavior, and on the other to the more scientific meaning of cultivating a population of living things. The juxtaposition of the living tissues with psychological data overlaid with imagery of the body in revolt and at peace portray the immense complexity of a seemingly simple human gesture, the act of breathing.